I almost finish creating my projector a couple of days ago. By almost, I mean I still have to paint the outside, seal the air better and a few other minor things to do. I also want to peel the front AG layer.

Some numbers:

15.4 Sharp, WUXGA
18" triplet from opaque projector.
3D lenses fresnels - .2mm grid, 220mm and 550mm
Lumen lab light and socket
2 speed adjustable fans from Newegg.
LumenLab electronic ballast (400W).
Home Depot lexan XL10.
SurplusShed precondenser lens is 4.5".
Black out screen that people discussed on LL forums here everywhere (around $25).
It's 100" for the widescreen movie. For the whole LCD screen, it's taller than that, but a same width.

I can read text on top and bottom. Left and right is a little blurry and dark. The corner are a bit dark. There's some vignetting lines on the outside on the very white background (sorry to those that I said I didn't have this problem, it was so minor that I didn't see it before).

Total cost is a bit less than $600. This is rough estimate, but very close. I got lucky break on the triplet (from opaque projector) and I use $100 for the LCD cost (which is about the average of my $ spend on 1 LCD).

The LCD got the rear anti-reflective removed.

If someone have ideas on how to improve my corners brightness, please let me know.

Overall quality is satisfactory with movie (corner is not bad here, because top and bottom screen removed).

I watched 3 movies on this so far and it's very enjoyable. I haven't measure the temperature although I bought the thermometer for it (no place to stick it in). However, I am pretty confident it's cool. I can put my hand on top of the box, and it's mostly cool, only a bit warm near the lexan. This is due to the enclosure of the light bulb.

And here comes the rear of the box. You can see 2 fans of 120mm. I initially decided to use only 1 fan, so I bought only 1 grill. Also the right one leak alot of light. So, I will have to add light blocker to that later.

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The rear side. As you can see, it needs paint.Click to view attachment

The top with air filter. You may see the rear height is larger than the front height. That's optical illusion. They have a same hight, Hass box style. I feel the area for air to come in not large enough, what do you think? I sandwich a layer of foam in between windows screen. The length of the project is 39.25". Tallest at 12.5" and shortest at 7 5/8". Width is about 14". It's possible to trim 2 inches from this projector length.
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Front view with adjustable nob. The lens hole can be cut better, or have something to hide the edge. I didn't see anything around 5.3 inches though. Any suggestion? The nob is also a bit hard to turn. I was thinking of change it to a metal 2 side nob (versus 3 sides). I already got the part, but may not do it, because I don't turn this often, and it's not too bad either.

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The switch. I took it from the opaque projector. It has 3 states. 1 for off (shown in picture) , next, the fan is on. Next, both the fan and the ballast/LCD are on.

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Simple wiring indeed. Most wires/items except 1 are tied down. The focus mechanism has wheels on top and bottom to allow the triplet to roll. The 2 cuts you see on the top of the front panel are for anchors of the top panel. These anchors have springs that pull down and attached inside the box.

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The light box with the pro-reflector inside. Made of aluminum, paint black inside, but wrap by fiber glass in between aluminum tape. This helps the temperature tremendously because it keeps all the heat inside this box, with the fan pulls all these hot air out on the back. Without this box, my case is very hot, and I would fear burning if runs for too long. With this, I can run for hours and temperature are stable with my hand feeling. Since it runs for hour, I don't think I need to measure it. Also open the top, I can touch the ballast and feel just warm, not even hot. Before, it almost burned me. You can also see that I took the top and bottom of the ballast. I think that would take off a lot of heat (I am a bit concern about safety issue, anyone mind to share?). There is a fan right behind the ballast. Also, there is a fan sucking air out of the light case. There is a visible gap (near the ballast) on the light case that allow air to enter. I make it small with the intention that air comes in around the pre-condenser lens. However, since I moved the pre-condenser so close to the light bulb, there's not much gap left here. It hasn't crack yet, and I have a replacement. However, with air racing over its surface, I am confident it'll last. Note that this box can be moved back and forth for adjustment. Also notice the way I anchor the pre-condenser lens. It won't take any area away from the rectangle of light for the LCD, so 4.5" is used in full.
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Image looks better in real life. Brightness about the same.
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Nice light box

Usually, you have to set the exposure time pretty long to get a good picture of our projections.

I also like your focus mechanism, nice clean look on the outside.

PS. How do you like the Sharp panel?

Thanks NinHowFritz for the comment. I use manual shutter at 2 seconds to do this. I like the quality of the Sharp panel a lot. However, mod it is very difficult.

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Check allignment of your fresnels carefully again respect to dark corners. Are you using split or unsplit fresnel design? What size are you fresnels?

I had the same problem with corner darkness i just moved the bulb back a little and then my brightness was even

This is an un-split design. The fresnels are bigger than the LCD to make sure there's enough light. I'll play with it a bit more later in zoom and alignment. My car just broke down, so I'll have to devote some time for that.

After play a little bit with the video's color settings, check these new images out.

The shutter stop time is reduced down to 1.6 seconds.

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Nan Null, is your precon the 4.5"dia 6.5" fl condenser? Because I see your using the 220mm collimating fresnel. I suggest you get yourself a large diameter precon with at least 9" up to 12"fl to work better with the 220mm fres. I've made the 220mm work with 5.5" dia 12"fl lens and arizonavideo had made his work with a 6"dia 9"fl.

Thank you for the suggestion. Yes, I am using the 4.5" dia, 6.5" fl condenser. Any suggestion on where I can get the 5.5" dia or the 6" dia? I am searching at the surplusshed, but haven't found one there yet.

Ok. I am also using unsplit and my corners are dark but this is because i can see the arc image being clipped by the triplet on the sides , corners. Another words my triplet is not large enough for my arc, frensnel magnification. since your triplet is huge i doubt this is your problem but check just incase.

I am not sure how to see the arc image like you said. Did you take out the LCD, and just look at the arc image on the screen?

To cool the last warm area in my box, this is what I did, and it works wonderfully. This works with the pre-condenser lens. If you don't have one, it can be done similarly, but adjust your calculation a little bit.

First, I got the diameter of the condenser. Right now, I am still using the 4.5". The 15.4" LCD has this rectangle: 207mm for the height and 331mm for the width. The diagonal is 15.4".

So, the rectangle that actually get used on the condenser lens is:

height = 4.5"/15.4" * 207 mm = 2.38" (pardon me for the mixed measurement units)
width = 4.5"/15.4" * 331 mm = 3.8"

So, create a small aluminum rectangle, with a hole that size. This can be done by cutting 4 segments of a thin piece of metal, then glue them together using metal tape.

Then put this right behind the pre-condenser lens (between the pre-condenser lens and the lamp).

After I did this, the only barely warm spot is near the ballast. It's just barely warm. After running 2 hours movie, I can still touch the outside of the ballast, and it's warm not hot.

I think this solves the heat problem, and with variable speed fan, this can solve the noise problem too.

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On the other note, I change my light box so it has a door, making working with it easier. I also added light shields to the front of the light box fan. This completely blocks out the light box fan light leakage.

The LCD and the Fresnels are now adjusted to have good vertical alignment, and text on top and bottom are both very sharp.
The left side of the screen text is sharp, but the right hand side is a bit blurry. I think I have to play with this distance a little bit more.

There is two things left for me to do: get a bigger pre-condenser lens, and peel the front of the LCD off (I'll do this last, if a bigger pre-condenser lens doesn't help much).

Watching movies is just a pleasure now though.

can we get some updated pics of the changes?

My right side is blurry as well, when everything else is in focus. I believe this is because of 2 things in combination-chromatic abberation from the lenses, and the verical RGB striping of the LCD. The lenses bend blue more than green, and green more than red. Because the blue is already on the right side of the pixel area, it gets spread into the red of the next pixel. Same with the green, the stripes just don't line up on the sides of the projection. I think the left side appears sharp, because as the blue and green bend more, they just overlap each other.

Just my $.02

With camera images, it's hard to see a difference.
However, if you pictures you mentioned are for the projector itself, then it'll be hard to take images for. Although I created a door for the light box, I seal it up with metal tape, to seal all air gap. However, to work with it, I just peal this off, much easier than before, where I have to unscrew alot of things. The heat shield I mentioned is inside this box. Also, then light shield is also inside the box. The light shields are just 2 angle pieces of metals.

It took me a long while to do all that though. Because I didn't think hard about the door initially, I had to make the door fit to old design, which was time consuming.

When I get to buy a bigger pre-condenser lens, I'll open the light box, and takes some pictures for that. For the screen images right now, it looks real good. I hope I can show that some how. It's just the camera doesn't do justice to the real images. I'll give it another shot tonight.

If I am not lazy tonight, I may open the thing, and adjust my heat pipe/ducking so that it's not so close to the fan (at high speed, they touches). If I do this, I'll take some pictures of the light box too.

Some more pictures of the screen.
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The camera make the corners much darker than the real images.

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Nan Null, sorry if I left you in the dark here for a moment (no pun intended). I've occasionally searched through Surplushed and ebay for the precon you need and the closes I've found without paying to much was a 95mm dia with about 300mm (12") focal (search item 1035 @ SShed). The focal is good for the 220mm fresnel but you need a larger diameter to cover your 15.4" lcd. There are other places you could search such as Anchoroptics.com.

The another way around this is would be changing your 220mm fres to the 330mm that will work efficiently better with the 4.5"dia x 6.5"fl precon you already have. Good luck.

Due to different thickness of my LCD frame, I misaligned it. Last night, I checked it out, and it's about a quarter of an inch off. Fix this, and the text is very sharp now on both the left and the right. This helps the image somewhat. On the far left and right, text (small 11-12 points text) is still a little blurry. This is not really a problem at all unless I want to read text alot, and at the viewing distance I sit, my eyes can't read sharp text well, let alone not sharp text. Individual pixel is still visible and isolated, just a bit blurry. I think improving doesn't do much. I think either it's the condenser is not compatible, its distance is not right, or the triplet reaches its limit.

Still 2 + 1 things left to do. The peel of the LCD and getting a new pre-condenser. The +1 thing is painting the box.

Thanks for the info. I went on eBay that day, and found a good one. However, I was outbid (I thought no one wanted it). Anyway, it's myself to blame. The site Anchoroptics.com has what I need. It is also good that it sets a standard price, so I know what to bid the next time. Surplusshed doesn't have what I need (I ordered from them a few times now).

I am curious if just any lens with a right focal length and size can be used as condenser lens, or it must be "condenser lens". If any type of lens, then there'll be more choices.

The type you should use is a plano/convex type or pcx as it's also called, so when searching use these descriptions. Lens made of Pyrex would be ideal since they handle heat better but spendy.

Nice work! I love your cabinet. Can you tell me what size you cut your fresnels to and what type of bulb are you using?

"cabinet"?

The fresnels has the width of 14" and the height about 11 1/2" or 11 1/4". It's the same height as the Lexan piece I got from Home Depot. The width is about right for unsplit design. The height is more than enough. However, I didn't cut it smaller because I didn't bother cut the lexan down.

Last night, I took my projector apart, and changed the fresnels so that they're about 1 inch apart. I also made the anchor for this no longer movable. The fresnel frame now becomes just 2 pieces of wood with ridges on it. It's much more simple that what I had before. I don't need it to move because after knowing where it should be, it doesn't need moved any more.

Those lines I saw on the lighted screen (white content) disappear completely. I think the screen is a bit sharper and brighter, but I didn't measure with with a lumen meter. It could be just my head. What happens is that right after the adjustment, I tested it and images are just shiny and jump out of the screen. Then I watch for a while, and couldn't see it anymore. I feel like my head is playing a funny game with me :-)

I also took some pictures of the inside of light box, I'll post them tonight.

This is the light box door. You can see the condenser lens mounted right on it on the outside. I also have the aluminum rectangle attached to shield unneeded light. The lens seem mis-align, I'll double check it later. I think it's just the optical illusion, not that its mis-align that bad.



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Here's the inside of the light box. There are 2 pieces of aluminum attached at angle to block light to the vent outside. The box has 2 holes that line up with the lamp's 2 holes for bolts to screw into to secure to the projector case. Dust is everywhere (I was drilling on the case for anchoring the Fresnel lenses).

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Some irony. I run my projector without the light box lid close. The pictures is brighter. Not a lot brighter, but brighter on the edge, while not noticeably darker in the middle. When thinking about it, the rectangle on the condenser lens is pretty small for 4.5". This means that 4.5" is just definitely not big enough for this, and actually reduce the lighted area. It requires a much larger lens. I am waiting for my lenses to arrive. I will have to put the lid back on so to watch movies because it shields the heat.

I have a question though, the condenser lens is glass, so can it shield UV light and heat like the tempered glass used in the behind of the Fresnel lens? If so, would it be OK to remove the tempered glass piece, or in my case, the lexan?

Also the triplet has a tint color. I wonder if that's UV filter. If so, then the LCD is not protected, but anything outside of the projector would be fine. What do you think?

I am stripping the AG of my LCD right now. I did this with the anti-reflective layer awhile back.
The last time, I use water soak method. It works, but was very risky. I did use a bit excess force, but luckily, nothing bad happened.

This time, I use the paint stripper method. The procedure is simple really. I went to a Lowes store, got a stripper bottle (I'll get the exact name later) and a desaturated alcohol. I taped the 4 corners with electric tape. This is the most tricky part, because I want to tape up to the AG layer, but not over it. There is very little room for this. I tried with the paint mask tape, but that thing doesn't stick well. Next, I sanded slightly with 220 grid paper. Then put a lot of the gel like paint stripper on it, with a thick layer. Spread them out.

I waited for 30 minutes. Checked it out, nothing happened, but notice paint stripper got under the electric tape. I was panic. Then peeled them off, and clean the edge of the LCD. Good thing, nothing bad appeared to be shown. Next, I taped them using paint mask tape. Added more paint stripper to areas that dried up. Then put an aluminum foil sheet on top, and slept for 3 hours.

Just wake up, and check it out, most of the AG melted. Some still left, sticky, but not melted yet. So, I clean up as much as I can with as little effort as possible (I learned that overdo this would waste time and scratch the LCD). Then spread more paint stripper. Cover up and tape up with aluminum foil again. And typing this right now.

The stripper bottle I used is Heavy Duty Stripper - SuperStrip made by Savogran.

The AG removal is "almost" done. That took me 10 hours total. The result is mixed. Brighter and sharper text. However, I made some crucial mistakes. By "almost", I mean that I want to polish the polar somehow. I scratched it. I don't know how. But there are some scratch marks that shown when look from close up to the screen or when the white screen is shown. Also, there are many little dots (not see from distance) still left. I think these are glue. They stick real hard. I had to use finger nail to get rid of some of them. Even when they're not sticked anymore, they slide hardly, and does not come off. I know many of them are still there, but I didn't think it matter much. I may get rid of them later

The scratches are what I am not too happy. I didn't use much force at all. Here's what I would do differently:

1) Sand before tape the edge. Make sure sand lightly (easy to do actually), but must be thoroughly. Don't leave any area un-sand bigger than a square with larger than 1/8" each side. The finer, the less you have to repeat the clean/reapply stripper.

2) Tape edge with paint mask tape.

3) Cover up check once a while and add stripper as needed (if dry).

4) Clean up:
- Take some soft paper town, wipe a small area the use cotton ball wet with denatured alcohol and clean immediately. This is important because if not clean, the surface will dry and paint stripper needs to be applied again. Another way is to use some rubber device such as glass window wiper if available. Avoid using the scrapper will prevent the scratch of the screen.

5) If anything not melting yet, add more stripper. Only work with liquid, anything hard, even already moving, do not touch.

I think my scratch comes from using the scrapper moving the paint stripper/AG mix to a pile before clean up. I used very light force, but I think the polar layer is very soft. The scrapper was filed beforehand to make sure it's not sharp.

Anyway, I learned a great deal, and I am sure if there is next one, it'll be much better.
Now, I'll find a way to polish this thing to see if those scratch marks would go away. Is doing this recommended on the polar layer? Would it goes away?

I will attempt to make my projector brighter. 1st would be to install a new pre-condenser lens once it's in (I have been waiting for this). Next, I'll change the projector from unsplit to split design. I think split design will make it much brighter in the corner. However, this is to be seen. Another factor is the clarity of the pictures. I know that un-split design give cleaner pictures (because no fresnel goes after the LCD).

For now, I'll find a high res images of some test pictures to take some pictures so I can compare before and after images.

You dont need to pull the lcd you need to look and see where the bright blob is hitting on the back of the triplet. Put a white blank paper flat against the back of the triplet and see if the blop overpasses the clear glass diameter of the triplet. The bright blob of light will not be sharp unless you use a 150w bulb.
My lcd has no anti glare but i still get a big blob. Its important to make sure the light blob is not clipped by the diameter of the triplet.

I just realized that if i position my triplet closer to the lcd the arc blob of light might actually fit in the triplet. This means my throw distance must remain at 4.7 meters and a 4 meter wide image. Right now i dont have the room to test this but it may work.

you need to make sure the condensor you have is made of pyrex and has a UV shield built in to it. if it does not have UV shielding you need to keep the Lexan or tempered glass to keep the UV from fading your panel. your screen shots look quite good. any inside shots of the projector? how did you mount the reflector?

I just got my pre-condenser lenses. They're 6 1/2" beauty. I can't wait to install it. I will keep the Lexan. My pre-condenser does not have UV shield (from the look of it, it's clear).

For the inside shots, besides the pictures I already posted, do you want to see how the LCD and fresnels are mounted? Right now, the condenser fresnel goes together with the Lexan. About 20 mm apart is the 2nd fresnel, then about 15 mm from the 2nd fresnel is the LCD.

For the mounting of the reflector, I use 2 strips of metal, put the in a cross, and then bend them into 90 degree. You can see it in the pictures. I saw some people did similarly, but instead of bending each of the 4 legs of the cross 90 degree, it's bended into a curved shape. I also have a curvy strip of metal between the center of the cross and the reflector to act as a spring pushing it upward. In the center of the cross, I have a small bolt goes through it and to the back of my light box.

There is also a shot of the triplet posted.

I think by design, beside non-split, I don't think there's anything else contributed to the brightness/darkness.

The pictures look good, however, I see some people have 15 feet screen and have the corner very bright. So I figure there must be something else, which could be the split/non-split.

The bulbs they use often are the round type (not tube), and shorter then LL, I wonder if it's brighter.

I also tried the ceramic lamp. It's bright, but I am not sure brighter than LL. However, I could not get the focus right for this, I'll refocus it tonight to see if there's any difference with the ceramic lamp (400w).